Contact, Conquest and Colonization: How Practices of Comparing Shaped Empires and Colonialism Around the World

361 Pages·2021·4.162 MB·English

by  Eleonora Rohland, Angelika Epple, Antje Flüchter and Kirsten Kramer

Contact, Conquest and
Colonization
Contact, Conquest and Colonization brings together international historians
and literary studies scholars in order to explore the force of practices of
comparing in shaping empires and colonial relations at different points
in time and around the globe.
Whenever there was cultural contact in the context of European
colonization and empire-building, historical records teem with comparisons
among those cultures. This edited volume focuses on what historical
agents actually do when they compare, rather than on comparison as
an analytic method. Its contributors are thus interested in the ‘doing of
comparison,’ and explore the force of these p ractices of comparing in
shaping empires and (post-)colonial relations between the sixteenth and
twentieth centuries.
T his book will appeal to students and scholars of global history, as
well as those interested in cultural history and the history of colonialism.
E leonora Rohland is Professor for Entangled History in the Americas
and Director of the Center for InterAmerican Studies (CIAS) at Bielefeld
University, Germany.
A ngelika Epple is Vice-Rector of International Affairs and Diversity and
Professor of Modern European and Global History at Bielefeld University,
Germany.
A ntje Flüchter is Dean of the Faculty of History, Philosophy and Theology
and Professor for Early Modern History at Bielefeld University, Germany.
Kirsten Kramer is Chair of the Department of Literary Studies and
Professor for Comparative Literature and Romance Studies at Bielefeld
University, Germany.
Routledge Studies in Cultural History
100 Charles Kingsley
F aith, Flesh, and Fantasy
E dited by Jonathan Conlin and Jan Marten Ivo Klaver
101 British Concepts of Heroic “Gallantry” and the Sixties Transition
T he Politics of Medals
M atthew J. Lord
102 C ultural Histories of Ageing
M yths, Plots and Metaphors of the Senescent Self
E dited by Margery Vibe Skagen
103 C oding and Representation from the Nineteenth Century to the
Present
E dited by Anne Chapman and Natalie Hume
104 D isability and Tourism in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Italy
L uciano Maffi and Martino Lorenzo Fagnani
105 D e-Illustrating the History of the British Empire
P reliminary Perspectives
E dited by Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes
106 C ontact, Conquest and Colonization
H ow Practices of Comparing Shaped Empires and Colonialism
Around the World
E dited by Eleonora Rohland, Angelika Epple, Antje Flüchter and
Kirsten Kramer
F or more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Studies-in-Cultural-History/book-series/SE0367
Contact, Conquest and
Colonization
How Practices of Comparing
Shaped Empires and Colonialism
Around the World
Edited by Eleonora Rohland,
Angelika Epple, Antje Flüchter
and Kirsten Kramer
F irst published 2021
b y Routledge
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a nd by Routledge
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R outledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
T he right of Eleonora Rohland, Angelika Epple, Antje Flüchter
and Kirsten Kramer to be identified as the authors of the editorial
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rohland, Eleonora, editor. | Epple, Angelika, editor. |
Flü chter, Antje, editor. | Kramer, Kirsten, editor.
Title: Contact, conquest and colonization : how practices of
comparing shaped empires and colonialism around the world /
edited by Eleonora Rohland, Angelika Epple, Antje Flü chter
and Kirsten Kramer.
Description: New York : Routledge, [2021] | Series: Routledge
studies in cultural history | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Subjects: LCSH: Colonization—History. | Europe—Colonies—
History. | Europe—Colonies—Historiography. | Imperialism—
Historiography.
Classification: LCC JV105 .C67 2021 (print) | LCC JV105 (ebook) |
DDC 325/.34—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055457
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055458
ISBN: 978-0-367-89472-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978 0-367-76693-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-01937-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Figures viii
List of Contributors ix
Introduction: On ‘Doing Comparison’ – Practices
of Comparing 1
ELEONORA ROHLAND AND KIRSTEN KRAMER
PART I
Women, Marriage Practices, and Morals 17
1 Bridging the Gap: Jesuit Missionaries’ Perspectives on
Marriage in the Philippines in the Period of Contact 19
MARYA SVETLANA T. CAMACHO
2 Constructing the Literati: The Jesuits’ Attempt to
Understand China’s Confucian Elite by Dint of Comparison 38
NADINE AMSLER
3 ‘Our’ Women, ‘Their’ Women: Domestic Space and the
Question of Modernization in Nineteenth-Century
Colonial India 57
SUBHASRI GHOSH
PART II
Politics, Polemics, and Propaganda 85
4 Entre Nos: Comparison and Authority in the Epistolary
of Antonio Valeriano 87
EZEKIEL STEAR
vi Contents
5 Global Benchmarks of Princely Rule in the Early Eighteenth
Century? Transcultural Comparison in the Political Series
of the German Publisher Renger (1704–1718) 110
VOLKER BAUER
6 Spain and Its North-African ‘Other’: Ambivalent Practices
of Comparing in the Context of Modern Spanish
Colonialism Around 1860 132
SARA MEHLMER
7 Propaganda, Cultural Diplomacy, and the Politics of
Comparison in the Early Cold War, 1945 to the 1960s 152
BENNO NIETZEL
PART III
Literature, Science, and Literary Discourse 173
8 Same Sky, Different Soil: Geographical Difference in
Eighteenth-Century Astronomy and Its Impact on Literature 175
ALEXANDER HONOLD
9 Between Nature and Culture: Comparing, Natural
History, and Anthropology in Modern French Travel
Narratives Around 1800 (François-René de Chateaubriand) 198
KIRSTEN KRAMER
10 Comparison as Context in Sir William Jones’s
Translations of Eastern Literature 225
CATHARINA G.M. JANSSEN
PART IV
Race, Civilization, and Religion 243
11 Colonizing Complexions: How Laws of Bondage
Shaped Race in America’s Colonial Borderlands 245
CHRISTIAN PINNEN
12 Tocqueville’s Compass: On History, Race, and
Comparison in A Fortnight in the Wilds 268
JULIAN T.D. GÄRTNER
Contents vii
1 3 Climates, Colonialism, and the Politics of Comparison:
The Construction of U.S.-American Tropicality in
Colonial Medicine and Public Health, 1898–1912 289
JULIA ENGELSCHALT
14 Between ‘Cannibals’ and ‘Natural Freemasons’: The
(Anti)Colonial History of Comparing Freemasonry
to African Secret Societies 312
STEPHANIE ZEHNLE
Concluding Observations: Modes of Comparing and
Communities of Practice 332
ANGELIKA EPPLE AND ANTJE FLÜCHTER
Index 339
Figures
5.1 Staat des Grossen Mogol, frontispiece. Herzog August
Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: Gb 298:13 (3) 111
5.2 Staat von Franckreich, pp. 5–6. Herzog August
Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: QuN 512 (1) 113
5.3 Einleitung zu den Europäischen Staaten, frontispiece.
Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: Gb 298:1 (1) 117
7.1 Department of Labour Study for the USIA, 1953.
National Archives 161
7.2 Poster-chart by the American Federation of Labor
and Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1958.
National Archives 162
1 2.1 The S uperior was only the second steam-powered vessel
traversing the Great Lakes. Courtesy of the Western
Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio 273
1 2.2 The narrative structure of Toqueville’s A Fortnight in
the Wilds. Graph by the author 277
1 3.1 Relative prevalence of various infectious diseases in
Puerto Rico and the Philippines, in Charles F. Mason,
“Observations upon Diseases in the Tropics,” in Report
of the Surgeon-General of the Army to the Secretary
of War for the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 1901
(Washington, Government Printing Office, 1901),
234–35, 234 296
1 3.2 Comparative increase in temperature of white skin and
brown skin when exposed to sun, in Hans Aron,
“Investigation on the Action of the Tropical Sun
on Men and Animals,” in Philippine Journal of
Science 6, no. 2 (April 1911), 101–31, 126 299
Contributors
Editors
Angelika Epple is Vice-Rector of International Affairs and Diversity and
Professor of Modern European and Global History at Bielefeld Uni-
versity. She is also the Director of the Collaborative Research Cen-
ter (SFB 1288) Practices of Comparing: Ordering and Changing the
World and principal investigator in the research training group (RTG
2225) World Politics at Bielefeld. She has broadly published on com-
parative historiography, gender history, and on asymmetries, transfers,
and intertwinements between economic and political actors on the
global as well as local levels. Her recent projects include the history of
race and intersectional comparisons that led to the Cuban race war in
1912, and a monograph for the book series Historische Einfü hrungen
of the German publishing house campus with the working title (in
German) “Globalgeschichte.”
A ntje Flüchter is Dean of the Faculty of History, Philosophy, and Theol-
ogy and Full Professor for Early Modern History at Bielefeld Uni-
versity. She is a principal investigator in the Collaborative Research
Center (CRC) 1288: Practices of Comparing. She has broadly pub-
lished on early modern global and transcultural history, the history of
religiosity and the confessional age in the Holy Roman Empire and in
India, the history of knowledge, and gender history.
K irsten Kramer is Chair of the Department of Literary Studies and Full
Professor for Comparative Literature and Romance Studies at the Uni-
versity of Bielefeld. She is also a principal investigator in the Collab-
orative Research Center (SFB 1288) Practices of Comparing: Ordering
and Changing the World, principal investigator in the BMBF Research
Project The Americas as Space of Entanglements, and associated
scholar in the Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS)
at Bielefeld University. Since 2008 she has acquired international
research and teaching experiences as a visiting professor at universities
in Mexico (UNAM, Guadalajara), Colombia (Medellín), Argentina